There aren’t many things in this world that scare me. I skydive, scuba dive, back country ski, fly small planes over big oceans and even disagree with my wife in public when I’m feeling especially brave. But there are a few things that terrify me, the first Halloween movie, that Jason is one scary dude, riding on the back of a another man’s motorcycle and sitting in the back seat of an aircraft when the pilot says something to the effect of “Watch this!”
As a Huey crew chief for twelve years I’ve had my share of interesting missions with a wide variety of pilots. Most of the pilots are pretty damn good and with few exceptions I’d fly with them any day. On occasion though a pilot will get it into his tiny little mind that a particular flight calls for an exceptional display of airmanship. It might be because he screwed up the last flight and feels that he needs to repair his reputation, or maybe he’s getting filmed for some special event, like we just saw in the cobra crash during an episode of Top Gear, or maybe he just wants to show off for his buddy, which is scariest of all.
Sometime in the late 80’s I was at Camp Ripley in Minnesota attending my units annual training. we’d been having a lot of fun roaring around the base in Huey’s during the day and playing Rat Patrol with Willies Jeeps every night. (We technically weren’t supposed to run around at night attacking sleeping companies, seeing that we were an aviation unit after all, but we had a former marine for a C.O. who thought it built character) One day a strange Huey landed in our perimeter and who should climb out of the right seat but my best friend in the world, I’ll call him Lee, because that’s his name. Lee and I had been best friends growing up and had joined the Guard together in 1979. We’d gone to crew chief school together, then he’d gone to the Army’s flight school while I did it on the civilian side. After shaking hands, Sergeants and Lieutenants aren’t allowed to hug in the field, Lee told me that he’d just passed his pilot in command check ride and had dropped in to give me a ride. It might sound unlikely that an Army pilot could swing by another unit in a helicopter to give his buddy a ride but things were kind of loose in the Guard back in the 80’s. I grabbed my flight gear and off we went. I could tell right away Lee wasn’t going to give me just a plain old helicopter ride. As soon as we were out of sight of my unit Lee dove for the deck and stayed there. For the next twenty minutes we flew low NOE (nap of the earth) never getting more than ten feet higher than the ground, trees or whatever he could find to Buzz. I’d flown a lot of NOE before but the ride Lee gave us was over the top aggressive. Lee was slamming the Huey into steep banks around hills and doing his best to stay below the tree line. Then came the scariest best part of the flight when Lee dove down onto the Mississippi River and got down to about five feet off the water while weaving back and forth following it’s snake like course. This far north the river is only about two hundred feet across and lined with huge Oak trees. I was scared shitless and having a blast at the same time and couldn’t decide if I wanted to keep going or stop before he made a mistake. The mistake came first. Lee pulled up out of the river and headed across a field toward a tree line at full speed. When he got to the edge he wrapped around the end of the tree line in a seventy degree bank pulling for all he was worth. The other crew chief and I were screaming in terror for joy when we suddenly leveled out and found ourselves looking down the barrels of ten 105 Howitzers. We’d accidentally flown onto the artillery range, and looking at all the smoke around the gun tubes the range was hot. There were a few OH SHIT!s as Lee cranked the Huey around and got us the hell out of there before some cannon cocker blew us out of the sky. When Lee dropped me back off at my unit he gave me one of those “Beat that buddy” smiles before taking off again. I couldn’t wait to throw him out of a plane, then we’ll see who’s scared.
